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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29138586">Healing isn't Always Immediate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf0fDarkness/pseuds/Wolf0fDarkness'>Wolf0fDarkness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>xXx (Movies), xXx: Return of Xander Cage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dialogue Heavy, F/F, M/M, Reconciliation, Serena and Xiang are Working Things Out, Serena is Slightly Better, Xiang is Bad at Feelings, long overdue talk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:35:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29138586</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf0fDarkness/pseuds/Wolf0fDarkness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Serena thinks things between her and Xiang are fine, until she's left alone with him for the first time since the whole Pandora's Box situation happened.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Serena Unger &amp; Xiang, mentioned Serena Unger/Adele Wolff, mentioned Xander Cage/Xiang</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Healing isn't Always Immediate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So you and Xander are getting along quite nicely, aren’t you?” Serena asked with a smile. She and Xiang had been put on gun-cleaning duty. Serena didn’t mind taking the shift, but Xiang had initially complained seeing as he rarely if ever used any of the equipment laid out in front of them. And to be fair, most of it <em>was</em> Adele’s. But since the gun owner currently had guard duty, it left the others to draw straws to see who would take over, and she and Xiang drew the short ones.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They had begun cleaning in friendly silence, maybe ten minutes ago, but she had seen the relationship that had begun developing between the two skilled Triple X agents and thought now to be as good a time as ever to broach the topic. Lord knows that there hadn’t been any other notable gossip since she and Adele had been the talk of the team. For a group of professional hitmen and assassins, they sure could act like teens. So she pressed again, “You two seem to be getting kind of serious.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Or, at least, they had taken several adrenaline-fueled adventures between missions, a declaration of love as strong as anything else. She and Adele had forayed across the savannah, visiting the prides that Adele had befriended and getting into fire-fights with some poachers, for their anniversary. So she wouldn’t put it past Xiang and Xander to do something similar, but the scoff the man let out may have indicated otherwise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What?” Serena teased, “Things not moving as fast as you want?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Xiang briefly glanced up from the weapon he was holding, continuing the motions of cleansing, “Things are going exactly as they should be.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Uh-huh,” Serena said skeptically, also continuing her task, “That’s why you’re avoiding talking about it right now? C’mon Xiang, give me something. You owe it to me after how much Adele and I shared about our relationship.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Maybe I just don’t want to talk about the person I’m sleeping with to his ex,” Xiang said, with a bit more edge to his voice than Serena would have expected given the lightness of her own comment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With Xiang back to looking down, Serena couldn’t judge if his expression would have softened the tone, so she answered carefully, trying to keep the joking tone she had established. Waving her hand dismissively, she said, “He and I weren’t much to talk about, you know that. A brief affair. Besides, we’re still friends and you and I are friends, and I am genuinely happy for you two. So cough it up, what’s happening between you two?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Letting out a sigh, Xiang paused his movements, but still didn’t look up, “We…aren’t anything. We fuck occasionally, nothing more to it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“That…doesn’t sound like you,” Serena said. For as much as Xiang loved living on the edge, risking his life with regularity even before joining the Triple X program, he was also deeply loyal to those he cared about, not really one for casual flings.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Well, it sounds like Xander, doesn’t it?” Xiang asked rhetorically in response, his voice short. He resumed his actions, though now they were slightly jerky. Serena paused her own completely.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It did and it didn’t sound like the Xander she knew. While he notoriously slept around when on missions prior to them all teaming up, he wasn’t a cheater. He liked sex, and he liked beautiful people, but he never strayed once committed. Even during their brief stint, wherein feelings burned out fast and the relationship itself lasted a bit too long, she knew he never stepped out on her just as she had never even considered cheating on him. If he gave his word, he stuck to it, which is why he tended to not give it often.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It sounds like you haven’t talked to him about it,” she admitted, keeping her gaze on him. This attentiveness served as the only reason she saw the clenched jaw at her prodding.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Why would I want to do that?” He asked, face neutral but eyes steely when he looked at her. “I know what the answer would be. Why would anyone want to choose me, at the end of the day?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Serena couldn’t help but give a slight, incredulous laugh at that, “You mean who wouldn’t want a badass, intelligent, sarcastic man?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You didn’t,” Xiang said, quietly, like he hadn’t quite meant for it to slip out.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Serena felt like she had been punched in the gut. And Xiang didn’t even seem to be aware of what he had done, as he picked up the weapon he had put down when he had made eye contact and continued to work. She wanted to snap back, say that she hadn’t betrayed him, she hadn’t picked someone else over him, had just been doing what she thought had been best in the circumstances. She barely reigned in her natural defensiveness because she knew if she responded in anger Xiang would become so reticent as to become unresponsive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Instead, she took a calming breath in and said in a fairly neutral tone of voice, “I did what I had to do, it wasn’t meant to be personal.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Serena worried for a second that even that had been too much as the entire line of Xiang’s back had tensed, but then he said, “I am aware of that. But you also shot at me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You know I would have hit you if I had wanted to.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Does that really matter? You would have ‘<em>done what you had to do,’</em> at the end of the day, wouldn’t you have? We ended up on the same side, but you put me and my team at risk,” Xiang said, still not looking up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another pang shot through Serena at the reminder that even now she no longer could be considered part of that team. She knew that Talon and Hawk still tried to avoid her when possible, and the easy camaraderie that the four of them had once held has long been gone, perhaps never to be recovered. But only now, when thinking about the distance between them and herself did she realize in a roundabout way that Xiang had also been keeping his own distance. Though much better at hiding his avoidance of her, Serena realized this was the first time the two of them had been alone since the whole Pandora’s Box fiasco. And a sharp hurt settled in her chest when she thought about the silence at the beginning that she had found companionable that in the past would have been filled with Xiang’s chatter, and how she hadn’t even noticed how unlike him that was, too caught up in enjoying being with him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I didn’t mean to,” Serena said weakly, then, firmer, “And we ended up fighting alongside each other at the end.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Not you and me,” Xiang said, “I was with Xander, up on a plane. You and I haven’t had a mission where we’ve needed to watch each other’s back, not alone. Why do you think that is?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Serena’s mind reeled with the new information, but she had been picked to be a Triple X agent for a reason, rolling with the metaphorical punches, and said, “You must know that I wouldn’t hesitate to cover you the same way that I had before.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I know that, logically,” Xiang confirmed, before ripping out her heart a bit more, “that doesn’t mean that in the middle of a fire-fight I might doubt it, if even for a second. You know what even that second could mean when your life is on the line.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I can’t regret what I chose to do,” Serena said, speaking honestly, tone a bit plaintive, though she tried to hide it behind her convictions. While hurt at how what she had done had damaged her relationships with her old teammates, she couldn’t regret it. If she started going over every choice she had made in her life, she probably would have ended up with a lot more regrets, but she doubted this would have been one of them. When Xander crushed the Box underneath his boot, all she had felt at the time was relief.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I wouldn’t want you to regret what you’ve done,” Xiang said, finally making eye contact again. And his eyes conveyed the truth in his words, “I just need you to understand where I’m coming from. So maybe Xander is acting like we’re exclusive, I know I am, but I need some more time before I can ask for someone else’s loyalty.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Serena nodded, “Well I happen to know that he’s crazy about you. Adele’s been complaining lately about how much he talks to her about you when we’re on missions.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Xiang smiled, a small, quiet expression that she hadn’t seen before. “Thanks.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it,” Serena said. “And, Xiang, when you’re ready, I’d like to take a trip with you, just you and me. Maybe talk some more, or shoot some guys, whatever you’d like.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After a moment of studying her, Xiang nodded, then picked up the next gun in the pile. Serena followed suit. A silence hung in the air for several moments before Xiang broke it with an anecdote from the last vacation he and Xander had taken. Serena let out a genuine smile, hidden by her looking down. Maybe his voice still didn’t quite carry the warmth it would have before, and maybe he no longer had large gestures to go with his storytelling, but maybe one day that would change.</p>
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